Live Chat: A Guide for Australian Business Owners

Does your website have a live chat feature?

Live chat has long been considered as one of the nice-to-haves for business owners. However, over the last few years, the popularity of live chat has increased a lot. In terms of sales, visitors interacting with a live chat agent are three times more likely to buy from your site.

It’s no surprise that 79% of business owners think live chat has a positive impact on their sales, revenue, and customer loyalty.

But how do you set up a live chat? How much does it cost?

In this article, we’ll answer these questions and introduce you to some of the live chat solutions that you can try.

What is live chat?

Live chat is a way by which your website visitors can communicate with your customer support in real-time. Instead of having to call your customer support desk or send an email, they can have a live conversation instantaneously with your help desk agents in a chatbox built on your website. Since chats don’t require formal tone, they can openly talk about their issues like in a one-on-one conversation.

What are the benefits of live chat for business owners?

There are numerous benefits to having a live chat feature on your business website. Those include but are not limited to: higher conversion rate for ecommerce, better brand engagement and a larger number of leads. The most prominent ones are elaborated below.

The top-most benefits of live chat are:

1. It enhances customer engagement

Because of the live chat, your prospects will be able to have their questions answered immediately. It not only satisfies them but also forms a deep connection. This is evident by the fact that the satisfaction rate of live chat is over 90%.

2. Conversion rate jumps higher

According to a study by UserLike, visitors who contacted help desk via live chat are about five times more likely to purchase your product or service those who didn’t. This is because the chat session helps potential customers trust the brand better.

3. Customer service gets faster and better

Live chat allows support desk executives to respond to multiple queries simultaneously. Furthermore, they can share helpful images and video links with prospects to address their questions adequately. As a result, your customer service gets faster and of better quality.

4. Support desk cost reduces

A live chat service costs far less than traditional customer services communication channels such as telephone and email. That means you will have more fund available to spend on marketing and in turn, convert more prospects.

5. Your business becomes very easy to approach

When your prospects see the live chat option, they know that they can get quick answers to any queries they may have. Thus, they feel closer to your brand and would love to engage.

These are not all. There are a lot more benefits to having a live chat feature on your website. In case you are curious about those, feel free to visit the following pages:

• 5 benefits of live chat for your business (infographic).
• 9 benefits of live chat for your customer support people.

What is the top best live chat software for websites?

There are hundreds of options if not thousands of live chat software out there. You, therefore, need to find the one that meets your specific needs. The following are some of the most popular ones.

1. SalesIQ

SalesIQ is the best conversion-focused live chat solution for your business. Its key features are:

• SalesIQ lets you track visitor activities on your site so that you can engage them with personalized messages.
• It has a great offline chat feature that you can customise to help your visitors even when your team is offline.
• You can segment your visitors based on their level of interest and interactions on your website. This helps you prioritise your engagement and target those who are most likely to convert.
• It gives you easy-to-understand chat performance reports on your visitors and agents.

2. HubSpot Live Chat

HubSpot Live Chat is a solution that comes included with its CRM. Its notable features are:

• It’s capable of deep integration. So it will be able to connect with a wide variety of online services you may use as part of your website.
• It’s highly customisable. Thus, you can organise it in any way you want to integrate with your brand.
• It also provides personalised welcome texts, chatbots, meeting scheduling and preset answers.
• It’s a great option if you are on a tight budget or are currently using the HubSpot CRM.

3. LiveChat

LiveChat is very popular in the industry. Some of its mention-worthy features are:

• It has a WordPress plugin. If you have a WordPress website, then you can give it a shot.
• It has its mobile app which lets support personnel respond to customers from any device anywhere without logging into your website dashboard. It helps keep your login credentials secure.
• It lets you add survey forms at the end of every live chat session. This way, you will always know how well your support executives are tending to your website visitors.

4. ChatBot

ChatBot is a live chat solution that lets SMEs benefit from the power of AI. It’s popular for the following features:

• It lest you create your chatbot using its drag-and-drop interface. Once created, you can arm it with any chat sequence that fits your industry standards and meets your business needs.
• Along with chatbots, it also offers bots for a diverse range of services such as recruitment, package tracking, restaurant management and many more. Using it thus lets you not just automate your live chat sessions but other aspects as well.
• It can act as a virtual assistant for your Facebook page. If your prospect wants a real person, then you can easily forward it to your support agent.

If you want to know about some other live chat software, then visit the following pages:

• Best live chat software options for you to consider.
• Best live chat software for SMEs compared.

Does live chat cost money?

This is a question that many business owners ask or search on Google. Thus, it needs to be answered.

The answer to your question depends on whether you want to use a live chat software or you want to have a custom chat box developed for your website.

If you go for software, then you will need to pay monthly or yearly recurring subscription fees. But if you want a custom chat box, then it costs more, but it’s a one-time cost. After it’s developed, you will not need to pay anything for it unless you want any specific feature developed.

How to integrate live chat feature into a WordPress or any other website?

Integrating live chat software into your website depends on the following:

(a) Your content management system (CMS)

If your CMS is WordPress, Shopify, BigCommerce, Wix, Squarespace or any other popular ones, it will most likely have its live chat plugin. All you have to do is install it by logging in your CMS dashboard and then set it up according to your needs.

(b) Your live chat preference

If you want a custom live chatbox to be integrated into your website, then it will require a web design professional. This person will know how to integrate the chat feature without causing any disruption in any other parts of your website.

How to improve live chat customer service?

Improving your live chat customer service is a continuous process. It requires careful observation, chat documentation and data-driven innovation to enhance the chat quality.

The following are some tips and best practices that you will find useful for this purpose:

1. Always keep in mind that it’s a chat.

Doing so will help your support personnel (which may be you if you are a solopreneur) keep the tone conversational during the chat.

2. Establish suitable limits of expectations

Setting expectations involve letting your prospects know when and how you will deliver their required service. Doing so helps them have the right mindset for conversion and allows you to have a positive impression.

3. Try to respond to chats ASAP

The faster you respond, the more relaxed your potential customer feels. This positive experience inspires them to talk about your brand in their social circles. Not only does it boost your brand engagement, but it leads to more sales qualified leads.

4. Measure your live chat metrics

Measuring your live chat metrics can reveal a lot about your business performance. How many customers you have converted through chat, how long it takes to resolve specific queries and which are the most recurring issues your website visitors are facing are just some of them. These data will help you make better marketing and site redesign decisions.

If you are interested in more tips to improve your live chat customer support, visit the following links:

• 10 best practices to improve live chat.
• Top 5 ways to improve your company’s live chat experience.
• 15 live chat best practices for excellent customer service.

Some useful live chat stats you must know

Live chat has enormous benefits for businesses in both B2B and B2C ecommerce domain.

The following are some statistical information that strongly supports this claim:

• Over 4 out of every 10 customers prefer live chat to contact the support team to any other medium.
• Over 6 out of every 10 customers who contacted you via live chat are likely to return to your website.
• 70% of people would rather talk to a real person than to a machine.
• About 40% of purchase decisions are caused by a live chat session.
• More than half of the consumers want customer support to be available 24/7.
• Over 4 out of every 10 customers find a business website with live chat trustworthy.

If you need more stat info on live chat, then consider visiting the following links:

• 101 live chat stat data to convince you that you need live chat on your business website.
• 70+ live chat stats you need to know.
• Live chat stats all businesses should know.

You need to have the live chat feature on your website yesterday

There is no better a statement that emphasises on the value you can deliver to your prospective customers through live chat.

In the following years, a rising number of businesses will realise their power. If you want to be one of them, then please don’t let thoughts of cost stop you from getting it.

Tell us about your business, your customers and your existing customer support status. With this information, we can build a custom live chat solution that will help you reap all the benefits we discussed above.

Hundreds of Australian businesses have benefitted from our solutions. It’s now your turn.